Art from The Boy from Clearwater.
Adult
Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice.
By Eddie Ahn. Art by the author.
Apr. 2024. 208p. Ten Speed, $24.99 (9781984862495). 741.5.
“It’s hard to pinpoint what led to my career in environmental justice,” Ahn muses. The hard work of his Korean immigrant parents’ liquor retail business provided the Texas-born Ahn an elite northeast degree; they in turn “wait[ed] for the dream of what [his] higher education could do for the family.” Instead, Ahn’s “journey would be largely defined by… nonprofit work out west.” Even after law school—which he financed, in part, with superb poker skills—Ahn again chose nonprofit work and public service focused on environmental policymaking. Facing debilitating illness, anti-Asian hate, and constant funding uncertainties seem to be quotidian challenges. Amid his tireless (and humble) advocacy, Ahn also proves himself an impressive self-taught artist, including winning an art contest to beautify utility boxes throughout San Francisco. His debut memoir, too, is a remarkable achievement, full of clean lines, precise panels, exquisite details, and soft color washes. Creating the book, Ahn admits, “has helped [him]… strike a better balance in advocating for myself too.” An essential lesson for all. —Terry Hong
Earthdivers, v.2: Ice Age.
By Stephen Graham Jones. Art by Riccardo Burchielli.
Feb. 2024. 104p. IDW, paper, $15.99 (9798887240688). 741.5.
“If you die killing an enemy, you live forever in the stories of your people.” Jones viscerally imagines the inhospitable Ice Age in this second volume in his revisionist history comics series, which follows Tawny’s search for her children after being lured into the time-traveling cave in 2112. Tawny uses her resourcefulness and knowledge of history to survive dangerous beasts and violence between the Indigenous people and the invading Solutreans (Europeans traveling across the pack ice). After the Solutreans massacre a peaceful village, Tawny protects the remaining natives and an injured Solutrean child by killing the invaders in various karmic ways, including using her cold germs to poison their food. The powerful artwork captures the swirling chaos and violence of battle, as well as the brutal dangers of the Ice Age, adding to the grim mood with an overall dark, cool color palette. In the final chapter, Jones pulls back from this intimate story of a mother’s ferocity to show how Tawny’s legend persists and connects the other time lines. The abrupt transition from volume 1 is rocky, but readers will be compelled by the immediacy of Tawny’s story. —Krista Hutley
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir.
By Tessa Hulls. Art by the author.
Mar. 2024. 400p. Farrar/MCD, $40 (9780374601652). 741.5.
Artist/writer/adventurer Hulls presents her debut graphic memoir in 400 dense, black-and-white pages that explore (and expose) mental illness, dysfunctional bonds, inherited trauma, and cultural disconnects across three generations. She “tells [her] story the only way it can be told: as part of an entwined trinity in which [her] mom, [her] grandma, and [she] blur together against a backdrop of Chinese history and diaspora.” She begins with “three paltry grandmother facts”: “China, writer, crazy.” Sun Yi, the 90-pound specter of Hulls’ childhood, was a daring journalist who escaped newly communist China with her mixed-race daughter, Rose (Hulls’ mother) to land in Hong Kong, where she became a famous author before she “lost her mind.” Rose—and Sun Yi, a few years later—immigrated to the U.S., where Rose became Sun Yi’s caregiver for the rest of her life; their dysfunctional relationship manifested in traumatic complications into the next generation. Hulls copes by becoming “a cowboy of the mind,” constantly running away from her “family’s darkness.” Sun Yi’s death eventually calls Hulls home. “My grandmother was thirty when she wrote her memoir and saw her mind shatter. And I was thirty when I began piecing those fragments back together in the pages of this book.” Almost 10 years later, audiences are invited to “enter this story”—detailed, vulnerable, harrowing—and bear witness to Hulls “releasing [her ghosts] into the light.”—Terry Hong
A Firehose of Falsehood: The Story of Disinformation.
By Teri Kanefield. Art by Pat Dorian.
Feb. 2024. 240p. First Second, $29.99 (9781250790439). 741.5.
Fake news is as current as it’s ever been, but, through examples and context, Kanefield shows that disinformation tactics are nothing new, only perfected in our modern time. Though this latest entry in the World Citizen Comics line starts off by tracking disinformation throughout history, it ultimately seems to serve as an important context to current times. Historical examples of disinformation, like Mussolini’s reference to “drain the swamp,” neatly set up the second half of the book, which focuses on such current events as Putin, InfoWars, and Donald Trump. Though the shift may be jarring to those expecting a more straightforward history, Kanefield easily justifies the change by giving instances of Trump’s actions and words that pair unsettlingly well with literal textbook definitions of disinformation. In his artwork, Dorian accentuates the propaganda style of the 1940s; the same style at first seems to clash with the modern events discussed, though it is perhaps a commentary on the unfortunate similarities between these two time periods. A well-executed, accessible primer on a difficult, timely subject. —Peter Blenski
YA: The accessible format and thought-provoking organization of the information makes this a great fit for teens interested in current events. SH.
Hound.
By Sam Romesburg and Sam Freeman. Art by Rodrigo Vázquez.
Feb. 2024. 96p. Diamond/Mad Cave, paper, $19.99 (9781952303784). 741.5.
Abandoned in no-man’s-land at the height of WWI, sensitive new recruit Barrow must now decide to either evade his new monstrous squad or join them and lose whatever humanity he has left. Though the start is bogged down by some heavy exposition and familiar language of the horrors of war, Romesburg quickly ramps up the tension by dragging Barrow into the action in a fight for his life. A few unexpected and horrific twists on his journey keep the piece engaging and surprising, and the story is certainly elevated by the
